Garcia Media Life

Gas Prices

Yeah, they’re high and going higher.  It’s been an inescapable trend over the last several years.  Gas prices are low when the economy is reeling.  They are high when economic conditions improve.  Both sides always try to bash the party holding the White House about costly gas prices and both come up with solutions or blame that are just plain silly. 

Really want to have an effect on gas prices?  Convince one billion Chinese to stop buying cars and filling them with gas. 

Collegiate Snobbery

Rick Santorum has been getting a lot of flack from Democrats and Republicans alike for saying this:

President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college.  What a snob. There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor trying to indoctrinate them. I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.

Foolish or crazy as a fox?   It may yet resonate with conservative blue-collar voters in Michigan.  And I’ll bet a lot of anti-Obama voters didn’t even hear the college part as much as they heard the “Obama is a snob” part, which some suggest is the GOP version of class warfare.  It may well work- in a primary.  The overall problem with this strategy, of course, is that there’s polling that finds 93% of Americans think it’s a pretty good idea to send your kids to college.

Looking Forward to that Cruise Ship Vacation

First there was the Costa Concordia incident, in which an Italian sea captain trying to show off, came too close to shore, grounded his ship and killed more than 30 passengers and then literally tried to catch a cab and run off into the good night. 

Now you have its sister ship, the Costa Allegra, adrift in the Indian Ocean.  And as if it’s not bad enough that a generator fire knocked out the engines, the radio communications and then the air conditioning, it was adrift in “Pirate Infested Waters.”   I’m not afraid to admit I hate infestations of any kind, but particularly pirate infestations.

In between the two incidents, there were several outbreaks on a number of cruise ships of the Norwalk Virus.

So….if you don’t get killed by a show-off captain, manage to avoid spending three days with a raging fever and massive intestinal distress, and escape marauding pirates in the Indian Ocean- it should be a wonderful vacation experience for all!

My memories of a cruise ship vacation were primarily the tiny, little cabins and the huge bill at the end.  In between, you eat like a depraved Roman Emperor, consuming indescribably large amounts of food in a celebration of decadent gluttony accented with pretty little ice sculptures gently melting on a buffet table of death.